Playwright Pick

Christopher Hampton

Christopher Hampton is a playwright, screenwriter, director and producer. Born in 1946 in Portugal, he spent his childhood in Aden, Egypt and Zanzibar, then studied French and German at Oxford University. He was the youngest writer ever to have a play staged in the West End, and in the late 1960s, was resident dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre.

His own stage plays include When Did You Last See My Mother (1966), performed at The Royal Court Theatre,  Total Eclipse (1968) about the relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine; the comedy The Philanthropist (1970); Savages(1974) and Treats (1976).

His screenwriting credits include translations of classics such as Ibsen’s A Doll’s House(1970); Tales from the Vienna Woods (1977) and Moliere’s Tartuffe (1984), and his television work includes The History Man for the BBC, The Ginger Tree (1989) and Tales from Hollywood (1989).

In 1985 he wrote the play Les Liaisons Dangereuses, adapted and translated from the novel by Choderlos de Laclos, and later adapted this as a screenplay. The resulting film,Dangerous Liaisons,  was an international success and won many awards.  He also wrote and directed Carrington, about the relationship of Lytton Strachey with the painter, Dora Carrington.

Other work includes translations of Yasmina Reza’s work for the stage, and further versions of Chekhov and Odon von Horvath.  He wrote the stage adaptation and co-wrote the lyrics for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, and the recent screenplay for the BAFTA nominated film, Atonement.